


The Artist

by hrhrionastar



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Episode: s01e03 Bounty, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone had to draw the poster of the Seeker hung in every tavern in the Midlands...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Artist

 

[ ](http://s941.photobucket.com/albums/ad256/hrhrionastar/Richard/?action=view&current=lots01x03_000069-1.jpg)

  


cap from the [Seeker and Confessor Society.](http://www.mutlipleverseslots.com/CSSWebsite/CSSS1EPCaps.html)

****  
The Seeker knelt by a stream, filling a bottle with water. Light shimmered on his bent head, marking golden highlights in the dark hair. The cut was awkward, too long for a peasant and too short for a noble.  
  
A pendant that resembled the tooth of some animal dangled over the stream, above the vee of his open collar.  
  
Suddenly he raised his head, as in response to some sound. A welcome one, judging by the way his warm brown eyes lit, and a smile spread across his young face.  
  
A killer should not look so carefree, but the Seeker's expression of naïve innocence was too complete to be insincere.  
  
As he rose and moved away from the stream, the vision fractured. Little waves of water eddied outward until they reached the edge of the scrying bowl, and gradually dissipated.  
  
The water was once more clear. The single drop of blood Lord Rahl had used to call up the vision was gone.  
  
He stood waiting, across the table from the artist. He did not ask if she needed to see the Seeker's image again. Lord Rahl was willing to pay for the best, and he got it, if not with gold then by some other means.  
  
The artist closed her eyes, to hold the Seeker's face in her mind.  
  
Then she picked up her charcoal pencil and began to sketch.  
  
This drawing would be reproduced and posted throughout the empire. It was not a masterpiece to hang in the palace art gallery. A superficial likeness would have been enough, if not for Lord Rahl then at least for the soldiers he had looking for the Seeker.  
  
Nonetheless, every line the artist drew must be perfect. Her pride would not permit her to be sloppy.  
  
She saw again the rather awkward brush of hair, the straight nose, the arch of the eyebrows, the hollow of the throat and the hanging pendant.  
  
The only thing she changed was the expression, making it determined and angry rather than open and impossibly innocent.  
  
The impression she herself was left with when she at last set down her pencil was one of extreme youth.  
  
So this was the Seeker, Lord Rahl's greatest enemy.  
  
The artist watched as Lord Rahl examined the drawing, no doubt comparing it to his own memory of the image he had called forth in the bowl of water.  
  
It occurred to her suddenly that the Seeker and Lord Rahl shared a certain similarity of jaw and chin. Even the sweep of Lord Rahl's eyelashes, unusually long for a man, was familiar, after her study of the Seeker.  
  
Curious.  
  
Lord Rahl handed the drawing to a servant who had orders to see it copied, and gave the artist a smile as sweet, if nowhere near as innocent, as the one the Seeker had worn. "Thank you," he said.  
  
The artist curtsied.  
  
Lord Rahl appeared to dismiss her entirely from his attention. She gathered her materials and faded unobtrusively out of the room and back to her studio.  
  
The artist did wonder, however, what would become of the Seeker, and just what that pendant meant to him.  
  
Not that she would ever know. Her work was done.


End file.
